"Serpentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... second denotes the passive nature or female principle or the emblem of water. The third symbol indicates the destroyer, the reformer or the renewer, (the uniter of the two) and thus the preserver or perpetuator eternally renewing itself. The universality of serpentine worship (or Phallic adoration) is attested by emblematic sculptures or architecture all the ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... have got over a third of the distance between the Bayswater Road and the Serpentine, when he was aware of a small, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... external finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a confidential nook ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Adam was the first human being whom God created; nor that he and his posterity were the only intelligent beings occupying this world before our tenancy of it; nor that we are even now the exclusive occupants. On the contrary, it makes very distinct allusions to other races, capable of assuming serpentine, swinish, and human bodies, and of meddling disastrously in earthly affairs in former times; though, as it does not profess to teach us truths which do not concern us, it gives us no narration of the creation or history of pre-Adamite animals or men. But there is ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the mighty ocean obey this wonderful influence in the ebb and flow of its tides, but the Earth, as she rotates upon her axis, obeys this mighty power and manifests in her depths and heights in her serpentine ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... moors which enclose the bay, those distant sleepy uplands where the keels of the cumulus clouds are grounded, there are saline meadows, lush and warm, where ditches serpentine between barriers of meadowsweet, briers and fat grasses. Nearer to the sea the levels are of moist sand covered with a close matting of thyme, and herbage as close and resilient as moss, levels that are not green, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... this vast channel of commerce; this magnificent thoroughfare of trade; one grand, unbroken chain of inter-communication, like to a prodigious sarpent, with his head resting upon the shores of Europe, and his lengthened form stretching over the ocean and curling along this great winding stream in serpentine grandeur, proudly flaps his tail at Paducah! . . . SIR, the ball is in motion; it is rolling down in noise of thunder from the mountain heights, and comes booming in its majesty over the wide-spread plain. Yes, Sir, and it will continue ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... fourteen. Poor Phil was fourteen when he was drowned. Under the ice on the Serpentine. He had just been licking me for boning a strap of his skate. I was doing the best way I could without it ... to get mine on, you see ... when I heard a stop in the grinding noise—what goes on all day, you know—and a sort of clicky slooshing, and I looked up, and there were a hundred ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... from the sea between towering cliffs, and behind a lonely rock, pierced with many caves and blow-holes through which the sea in storm time sent its thunderous voice, together with a fountain of drifting spume. Hence, it wound westwards in a serpentine course, guarded at its entrance by two little curving piers to left and right. These were roughly built of dark slates placed endways and held together with great beams bound with iron bands. Thence, it flowed up the rocky bed of the stream whose winter torrents ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... for dyeing and otherwise treating goods in the cold, or at a lukewarm heat, when the supply of hot water can be drawn from a separate boiler. When, however, it is necessary to work at the boil, then the vat must be fitted with a steam coil. This is best laid along the bottom in a serpentine form. Above the pipe should be an open lattice-work bottom, which, while it permits the free circulation of boiling water in the vat, prevents the material being dyed from coming in contact with the steam pipe. This is important if uniform ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... my love, I know such a pretty game we'll play at— Poor TIMBURINA'S ill, and the seaside she ought to stay at. (The Serpentine's the seaside, let's pretend,) And you shall take her there—(hypocritically)—you're ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... turned an angle in the mountains, when suddenly before us we saw several wapiti, commonly known as the "Canada stag," one of the largest of the deer tribe. This animal is fully as large as the biggest ox I ever saw; his horns, branching in serpentine curves, being upwards of six feet from tip to tip. In colour he is reddish-brown; on the upper part of the neck the hairs are mixed with red and black, while from the shoulders and along the sides the hide is a kind ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... the slope is the same, and the method of making roads in the serpentine style to reach a gate leading to the important part of town, is not only the common method employed for hill towns, but the natural and necessary one, not only in ancient ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... his hind legs on his fences, and oblige him to leap from the top of his banks and to land all fours, instead of extending himself and letting himself down gently. In swimming it obliges him to keep his whole head and neck out of water; I very nearly drowned a horse in this way in the Serpentine. ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... half a mile northward, and in that space descended near a thousand feet from the level of Vacouas, the river turns west; and passing through the deep cut or chasm in the boundary ridge, enters the plain of Le Tamarin and winds in a serpentine course to the sea. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... Alpha and Omega, within ox-eyes, on either side. In the south wall in front of the vestry is a lancet-shaped doorway, and, west of it, an arcade of two lancet apertures, supported by four columns of serpentine. Within the vestry is a two-light lancet window; and let into the eastern wall is a small slab, having four grotesque figures, one blowing a kind of bagpipe, the others dancing. This is said to have been a portion of ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... have fallen as leaves by the storms in their season thinned, Since northward the war-ships of Spain came sheer up the way of the south-west wind: Where the citadel cliffs of England are flanked with bastions of serpentine, Far off to the windward loomed their hulls, an hundred and twenty-nine, All filled full of the war, full-fraught with battle and charged with bale; Then store-ships weighted with cannon; and all ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... had never even beheld the enchantress since that never-to-be-forgotten morning when he had seen her pass at the head of the serpentine procession of pupils, slowly winding across the Market Square. But he knew she was still in Gueldersdorp. He felt her, for one thing. We know that in his case Love's clairvoyant instinct had got its nightcap on. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... its sources to its mouth. As in languor and suffering he reclined upon his couch, all the beauty and bloom of May, in a delightful clime, were spread around him. The silent flood swept by, rushing down a distance of countless leagues in the north, until, after a serpentine course of more than a thousand miles, through the most wonderful scenes of nature, and fringed with the villages of innumerable savage tribes, it was lost in the great Mexican gulf. The Indians moved ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... Street, Russell Square, was Master George's great friend and admirer. They both had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sate in great comfort in ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... experienced an unfamiliar chill as his uncompromising stare met the cold hatred which blazed out of the black eyes, narrowed, now, and serpentine, of Zani Chada. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... eight other gentlemen of about the same age went down in a body to Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat there, and pulling to Richmond and back; one of their number, a shock-headed youth, named Joskins, who had once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine, told them ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... backing Makn,[EN33] and the jagged black peaks of their eastern parallel, the Kalb el-Nakhlah, look like plutonic reefs or island-chains emerging from the Secondary sea. The latter, whose bleached and skeleton white is stained, here and there, by greenish-yellow sands, chlorite and serpentine, stands boldly out from the chaos of purpling mountains composing Sinai, and ending southwards in the azure knobs of three-headed Tirn Island. The country, in fact, altogether changed: quartz had disappeared, and chlorite had ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... of a house in the rue Serpentine, was speaking angrily. He said he didn't care whether Hartman liked it or not; he was telling him, not arguing ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... less to brace our unstrung nerves by the elastic air—less to bathe our wearied eyes in the green light of earth's bosom, than to drive away sad thoughts in the contemplation of your innocent gambols; with our stick; delight we to launch your mimic barks from the sandy shores of Serpentine; with you, glad are we to make haste, expecting the fastest sailer on the further shore; with you, we exult, once more a boy, in the speed of our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and tragic appearance, which seemed to deepen as he neared me. I thought he had been toying affably with a nursery-maid the moment before, who stood with some of her little charges watching the yachts upon the Serpentine. Howbeit, espying my approach, F. B. strode away from the maiden and her innocent companions, and advanced to greet his old acquaintance, enveloping his face with shades ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured may, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine With its dark buds ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... an effort on the morning of the 13th to stem the current under sail but, as the course of the river was very serpentine, we found that greater progress could be made by tracking. Steel River presents much beautiful scenery; it winds through a narrow but well wooded valley which at every turn disclosed to us an agreeable ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... who was a better horsewoman than might have been expected from the little practice she had had, appeared to advantage in the saddle. She had just indulged in a brisk canter from the Corner to the Serpentine, when she saw a large white horse approaching with Wallace Parker ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... through the pipes, a and c, into the serpentine tube, where it is condensed, and then flows through the tubes, d and b, back into the vessel, A, if the cock, r, is closed, but if the said cock is open, it flows into the receptacle, K. When the liquid begins to boil the steam passes freely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... a great river called Pulisangan[2], which empties itself into the ocean, and by which many vessels ascend with merchandize to a certain handsome bridge, all built of serpentine stone, curiously wrought. This bridge is 300 paces in length, and eight paces broad, so that ten men may ride abreast. It is secured on each side with a wall of marble, ornamented with a row of pillars. The pillar on each ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... seen, rising in the distance, a downy hill, now sprinkled with some snow which had fallen the night before the frost regularly set in, and which had thus not affected the surface of the lake. At the lower end the ground fell, and a long stream-like serpentine channel could be seen winding away, in one place overhung by trees, and in others between green meadows, till lost in the distance. The lower part was, in the summer, the favourite resort of anglers, for it contained ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Medinas that have fallen, overcome by weariness, at the wayside; or have encountered storms in the great aerial sea, and lost compass and reckoning, and have been lured by false lights to perish miserably at the hands of their cruel enemies. It may be true that gulls are seen on the Serpentine, that woodcocks are flushed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but the citizen who goes to his office in the morning and returns after the lamps have been lighted, does not see them, and they are nothing in his life. ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... at the head and called out "Forward." Hurstwood moved with the line. Across Fifth Avenue, through Madison Square by the winding paths, east on Twenty-third Street, and down Third Avenue wound the long, serpentine company. Midnight pedestrians and loiterers stopped and stared as the company passed. Chatting policemen, at various corners, stared indifferently or nodded to the leader, whom they had seen before. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... waved his pipe in the direction of the serpentine family-party. A thunderbolt falling in their midst could not have been more effectual. The whole living mass looked stunned for a moment, and then rapidly disappeared among the reeds with loud hissing ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... rock, are usually richer than those which have the same kind of rock on both sides. Thus it is said that the richest veins of auriferous quartz in California, have been discovered at the intersection of trap and serpentine, and the richest places in veins are where they cross from one kind of bed-rock into another. The richest part of a lode of auriferous quartz is almost invariably on the lower side of the vein, near the foot-wall. All these are facts to be remembered by the prospector ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... celebration, on account of the peace, held in Hyde and St. James's Parks, in the latter of which there was a grand display of fireworks; while, still further to amuse the John and Jenny Gulls of the cities of London and Westminster, there was a sham naval engagement got up on the Serpentine River, representing a battle between the British and American fleets. Of course the British fleet was victorious, and the Americans struck their colours, amidst the huzzas and shouts of the family of the Gulls, who, having ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... informed himself on the matter, thereupon explained that the procession would first of all ascend the serpentine road—constructed at great cost up the hillside—and that it would afterwards pass behind the Basilica, descend by the inclined way on the right hand, and then ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... trembling light of the candles, the face of Jennka became more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone off it, remaining only here and there on the temples, on the nose, and between the eyes, in party-coloured, uneven, serpentine spots. Between the parted dark lips slightly glimmered the whiteness of the teeth, and the tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out of the open collar of the neck, which had taken on the colour of old parchment, showed two ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... account of the winding ways made in consequence of the intervening by-hills.... Everywhere there are caves, and their mouths are often so small that only one man can creep through at a time; the approaches to them are so serpentine, that he who is pursued may escape from his pursuer, and step into such a small opening, of which there are frequently three or four beside each other, before his pursuer is aware of it. Hence, if any one should hide ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... of jasper, agate, chalcedony, serpentine, nephrite, steatite, quartz, crystal, glass, jade (white and green), and chrysoprase. Mention is also made of rakan, but the meaning of the term is obscure. Probably it ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... into the Danube. The channels of these rivers are deeply furrowed and the fall is rapid; irrigation is consequently difficult and navigation impossible. The course of the Iskr is remarkable: rising in the Rilska Planina, the river descends into the basin of Samakov, passing thence through a serpentine defile into the plateau of Sofia, where in ancient times it formed a lake; it now forces its way through the Balkans by the picturesque gorge of Iskretz. Somewhat similarly the Deli, or "Wild," Kamchik breaks the central chain of the Balkans near their eastern extremity and, uniting with the Great ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... to its source was called the Araheoa. It was a rushing, noisy torrent, winding along a deep and narrow gorge, which in places almost met overhead. Some patches of olivine and serpentine encouraged me to think that we should find a heavy belt of the rock somewhere along the upper part of the valley, but my hopes were not realized. Day after day passed, and I found no more of it. When my companions washed the sands of likely ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... little boys, and two or three other four-year-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of joy and wonder! Oh what happy spectators! And what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity never excited by all the quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the Serpentine. He really skates well though, and I am glad I came this way; for, with all the father's feelings sitting gaily at his heart, it must still gratify the pride of skill to have one spectator at that solitary pond who ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... subject and began to flatter me. I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... tinkled back into the central reservoir. On either side of the court a tall, graceful palm-tree shot up its slender stem to break into a crown of drooping green leaves some fifty feet above their heads. All round were a series of Moorish arches, in jade and serpentine marble, with heavy curtains of the deepest purple to cover the doors which lay between them. In front, to right and to left, a broad staircase of marble, carpeted with rich thick Smyrna rug work, led upwards to the upper storeys, which were arranged around the central court. The temperature ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... kneaded—carelessly, in very soft material. Beneath her open cloak her dress was of the ordinary German Reform-Kleid type, and her figure had the rather jelloid appearance of those who affect this style. Her regulation witch's hat was by now, probably, in the Serpentine, and her round head was therefore disclosed, with two stout sand-coloured plaits pursuing ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... little village to the buildings and landscapes on Chinese platters and tea-pots; but here I found the similarity complete; for I was told that these gardens were modeled upon Van Bramm's description of those of Yuen min Yuen, in China. Here were serpentine walks, with trellised borders; winding canals, with fanciful Chinese bridges; flower-beds resembling huge baskets, with the flower of "love lies bleeding" falling over to the ground. But mostly had the fancy of Mynheer Broekker been displayed about ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... have to tell them till to-morrow. I had to take Norah to Lancaster Gate in a taxi, and I walked back across the Serpentine between Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, spinning out the time so that Viola and Jimmy might be in bed when I got to ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... always to be able to rapidly produce a pressure of nine atmospheres or more by direct heating. The flanges of the tubing are provided with a cut-off of angle iron identical with that of the tube, D. By means of this arrangement the cocks and the flanges, E, permit of communication between the serpentine tubing, R, and the boiler being interrupted; while the heat developed by the fire-place, F, causes an active circulation in both ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... last. omstrl|a (-ade, -at), to surround with light. omjlig, impossible. ond, evil, angry, bad. ondig, unnecessary. opp, upp, up. ord (-et, —), word. orm (-en, -ar), serpent. ormsling|a (-an, -or), serpentine ring or figure. orolig, disturbed. ort (-en, -er), place, locality. orknelig, innumerable. ortt, wrong. ortt (-en), injustice, wrong. osedd, unseen. oskadd, uninjured. oskapelig, unshapely. oskuld (-en), innocence. oskuldsfull, innocent. oss, ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... type may possibly be of Eastern origin. The krisses of the Malays, at the present day have serpentine blades. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... snapdragons, in another patches of aromatic thyme and wild strawberries keep up the charm of the place. As we draw nearer to the Tower the ground is laid out in a wilder and more picturesque manner, the walks are more serpentine. We turned a corner, and Mr. Beckford stood before us, attended by an aged servant, whose hairs have whitened in his employment, and whose skill has laid out these grounds in this beautiful manner. Mr. Beckford welcomed me in ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... got to the home of the water babies, in Saint Brandan's fairy isle, he found that the isle stood all on pillars, and that its roots were full of caves. There were pillars of black basalt and pillars of green and crimson serpentine; and pillars ribboned with red and white and yellow sandstone; and there were blue grottoes and white grottoes, all curtained and draped with seaweeds, purple and crimson, green and brown; and strewn with soft white sand, on which the water ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... muttered Nayland Smith. "There is about her something serpentine, at once repelling and fascinating. It would be of interest, Petrie, to learn what State secrets have been filched from the brains of habitues of this den, and interesting to know from what unsuspected spy-hole Fu-Manchu views his nightly ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... and whirled and mounted and fell like the illumined filmy skirts of some invisible Titanic serpentine dancer, madly pirouetting across a carpet of stars. Then suddenly it all fell into a dull ember-glow and flashed out. The ragged moon dropped out of the southwestern sky. In the chill of the night, gray, dense fog wraiths crawled upon the hidden ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... correspondence. I perfectly recollect your name as that of an old schoolfellow, and distinctly remember your appearance and dress as a boy, and believe you had a brother who was unfortunately drowned in the Serpentine. If you had made yourself personally known to me at the dinner, I should have been well pleased; though in that case I should have lost your modest and manly ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a dainty prized then as well as now, fish, yellowtail and bonito, filled to the brim the large baskets which the men slung to their backs, carrying them by means of a strap over the forehead. On their heads they placed ollas, or water jars, of serpentine from quarries which may be seen in Santa Catalina to-day, the marks of the tools of workmen of, that ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... serious conversation with his daughter, and now gone forth on horseback. Handsome and graceful still, Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find himself scarcely less the fashion with the young than he was when himself in youth. He is now riding along the banks of the Serpentine, no one better mounted, better dressed, better looking, or talking with greater fluency on the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... proved from Herodotus and Pausanias. 2. The Pagan Zosimus agrees with the three ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius, Socrates, and Sozomen, that the sacred ornaments of the temple of Delphi were removed to Constantinople by the order of Constantine; and among these the serpentine pillar of the Hippodrome is particularly mentioned. 3. All the European travellers who have visited Constantinople, from Buondelmonte to Pocock, describe it in the same place, and almost in the same manner; the differences between them are occasioned only by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... principal fronts of Sion House command very beautiful scenery; for even the Thames itself appears to belong to the gardens, which are separated into two parts by a serpentine river that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... sheathes the sky in diffused light for very many hours before a brilliant aurora. Suddenly, a swift shadow, like the fabulous flying-dragon, writhed through the air before her, and she felt herself instantly seized and borne aloft. It was that wild beast—the most savage and serpentine and subtle and fearless of our latitudes—known by hunters as the Indian Devil, and he held her in his clutches on the broad floor of a swinging fir-bough. His long sharp claws were caught in her clothing, he worried them sagaciously a little, then, finding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... In large serpentine curves the road wound through a wood of small beech trees—so small that in the November dishevelment the plantations were like brushwood; and lying behind the wind-swept opening were gravel walks, and the green spaces of the cricket field with a solitary divine reading ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... trail that would swing from the road, dip into a sand arroyo, edge slanting up the farther bank, wriggle round a cluster of small hills, shoot out across a mesa, and climb slowly toward those hills to the west, finally to contort itself into serpentine switchbacks as it sought the crest—and once on the crest (which was in reality but the visible edge of another great mesa), there would be grass for a horse and cedar-wood for a fire, and water ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Melbury would have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned in through a gate to one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of the wood, which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a little basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, unaccompanied by a servant. She turned in at the same place without ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... judge from appearances, lived up to the principle of always following the line of the least resistance. It turned and twisted in fantastic curves, suggesting that the name Snake River might have been applied because of its serpentine windings. Charming little islands dotted its course, like green beads strung irregularly upon a silver cord. To add to its attractions, there was a dwelling near the knoll, with a barn where their horses could be cared for, and the white-haired, rheumatic old man who led Nat and Bess ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... has any sense he will just duck you in the Serpentine and make you apologise. Personally I consider myself anything but a baby, and far superior to any ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... the marshes; or, perhaps, as the English writer, Dodwell, suggests, the true explanation of the allegorical fiction is that the serpent was the river Cephis'sus, which, after the deluge had overflowed the plains, surrounded Parnassus with its serpentine involutions, and was at length reduced, by the rays of the sun-god, within its due limits. The poet OVID gives the following ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... afternoon a solitary traveler on horseback might have been seen winding slowly along the serpentine road that led over the hill above the falls. This traveler was David White. At his heart, were the same fierce and turbulent passions—the same dark thoughts and bad feelings—the same willful and perverse nature that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... and out with the lark. Afternoon Fireworks on the Stock Exchange. Hippopotamus-washing in the Serpentine commences. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... her eyes gave me no clue whatever. To meet her black stare was like looking into a deep well, and I was totally unprepared for her change of tactics. Instead of trying to tear my hands apart, she flung herself upon my breast and with a downward, undulating, serpentine motion, a quick sliding dive, she got away from me smoothly. It was all very swift; I saw her pick up the tail of her wrapper and run for the door at the end of the verandah not very gracefully. She appeared to be limping a little—and then she vanished; the door swung behind her so noiselessly ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Mediterranean Alps along the Riviera di Ponente, near Genoa, have short courses, and a brisk walk of a couple of hours or even less takes you from the sea-beach to the headspring of many of them. In their heaviest floods, they bring rounded masses of serpentine quite down to the sea, but at ordinary high water their lower course is charged only with finely divided particles of that rock. Hence, while, near their sources, their channels are filled with pebbles and angular fragments, intermixed with a little gravel, the proportions are reversed ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... were vigorous. Rising very early, he walked across the Park, and had a swim in the Serpentine. The hours of the solid day he spent, for the most part, in study at the British Museum. Then, if he had no engagement, he generally got by train well out of town, and walked in sweet air until nightfall; or, if weather were bad, he granted himself the luxury of horse-hire, and rode—rode, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Graves are frequently visited by the women at intervals, for some months, and at such times the wail is renewed, and their bodies lacerated as at the interment. At Boga Lake, I saw a grave with a very neat hut of reeds made over it, surmounted by netting, and having a long curious serpentine double trench, of a few inches deep, surrounding it; possibly it might have been the burial place of the native mentioned by Major Mitchell, as having been shot by his black, Piper, at ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Along the serpentine path which was bordered with masses of brilliant chrysanthemums, Beryl walked rapidly, feeling almost stifled by the pressure of contending emotions. Recollecting that these spice censers of Autumn were her mother's favorite flowers, she stooped and broke several lovely clusters of orange and garnet ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... nearly alike) were made on tracing paper placed over the glass-plates after they had been varnished; and they are as exact as possible considering the nature of the margins (Fig. 18). They suffice to show that there was some lateral, almost serpentine movement, and that the tips in their downward course pressed with unequal force on the plates, as [page 29] the tracks varied in breadth. The more perfectly serpentine tracks made by the radicles of Phaseolus ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... has, instinctively, comprehended that there was, beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... others to do the same. At last, at a sharp turn of one of these rocky eminences, they perceived an enormous cloud of white vapor rising up like smoke from the earth, and twisting itself as it rose, in swaying, serpentine folds, as though some giant spirit-hand were shaking it to and fro like a long flowing veil in the air. Sigurd ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... banquets, routs, and balls which were enlivening the polite world. Our gracious Sovereign was holding levees and drawing-rooms at St. James's: the bow-windows of the clubs were crowded with the heads of respectable red-faced newspaper-reading gentlemen: along the Serpentine trailed thousands of carriages: squadrons of dandy horsemen trampled over Rotten Row, everybody was in town, in a word; and of course Major Arthur Pendennis, who ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods, and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little little less-than-little wit from them that they have! which short-arm'd ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... loved one's face? In a dream that loved one's face meets mine But the house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, With a malice that marks each word, each sign! O enemy sly and serpentine, Uncoil thee from the waking man! Do I hold the Past Thus firm and fast Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? This path so soft to pace shall lead Through the magic of May to herself indeed! Or narrow if needs the house must be, Outside are the storms ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... long may be called a toy ship, but it is a toy that can teach much to an Admiral, and I should not like to have as my comrade on a voyage the man of forty who can pass the Serpentine without a glance at the little ragged urchin there, who is half in the water himself while he reaches with a twig his tiny lugger after its long voyage across the lake among ducks, and row-boats, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... field told them of their danger; then Ootah's heart chilled, his teeth were set chattering; but he thought of Annadoah and the grim need of food, and he gripped the upstander of his sled more determinedly. When the moon again unclosed its pearly sheen over the ice, the serpentine chasms moved their tortuous backs and writhed about them, the icy hummocks billowed, and the glittering ice-peaked horizon swam in a dizzy circle of ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... lake in any of the parks in the north; some people say it is nearly as big as the Serpentine. I don't know, for I have never been in London. In summer-time hundreds of men come and sail boats— quite great big boats—from side to side. It looks so pretty to see all the white sails floating about ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... recorded these events have narrated them under a thick and almost impenetrable veil of fiction. They say that Hercules engaged in combat with the God of that river, who immediately transformed himself into a serpent, by which was probably meant merely the serpentine windings of its course. Next they say, that the God changed himself into a bull, under which allegorical form they refer to the rapid and impetuous overflowing of its banks, ever rushing onwards, bearing down everything ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... they crawled nearer and nearer, with gliding serpentine motion, till their heads almost touched the white line of coral. But not a man of them all went one inch beyond it. They stopped there and gazed at him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the sky, as much as ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... language a sufficiency of words to express the baseness of your king, his ministry and his army. They have refined upon villany till it wants a name. To the fiercer vices of former ages they have added the dregs and scummings of the most finished rascality, and are so completely sunk in serpentine deceit, that there is not left among them ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and miles round, is too powerful a force to put down. The Regent has raised a phantom which he cannot lay. There they'll stay probably forever. The whole beauty of the place is gone,—that lake-look of the Serpentine (it has got foolish ships upon it); but something whispers to have confidence ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... may recover, and come back again to skate upon the Serpentine, if you please. You observe, Ansard, I have not made you a fellow with 50 pounds in his pocket, setting out to turn it into 300 pounds by a book of travels. I have avoided mention of Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, and all common watering-places; ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... little white houses. The clatter of hoofs, And the music of wandering bands, up the walls Of the steep hanging hill, at remote intervals Reached them, cross'd by the sound of the clacking of whips, And here and there, faintly, through serpentine slips Of verdant rose-gardens deep-sheltered with screens Of airy acacias and dark evergreens, They could mark the white dresses and catch the light songs Of the lovely Parisians that wander'd in throngs, Led by Laughter and Love through the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... limestone. Malldraeth Marsh is occupied by coal measures, and a small patch of the same formation appears near Tall-y-foel Ferry on the Menai Straits. A patch of granitic and felsitic rocks form Parys Mountain, where copper and iron ochre have been worked. Serpentine (Mona Marble) is found near Llanfaerynneubwll and upon the opposite shore in Holyhead. There are abundant evidences of glaciation, and much boulder clay and drift sand covers the older rocks. Patches of blown sand occur on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... days at the end of the nineteenth century are greatly similar to those last days of Rome. Yvette Gilbert, the songstress of the vile, the recitationist of the vulgar, and Le Loie Fuller, the dancer of the serpentine, live off the fat of the land every day. The songstress and the kickeress get their thousands of dollars per week, while "the poor devil of a workingman" must be satisfied with a dollar a day cash and barrels of unlimited confidence. Caligula's ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ones bend together at the same rate, but one or two of the terminal ones bend at a slower rate; hence, though at times all the internodes are in the same direction, at other times the shoot is rendered slightly serpentine. The rate of revolution of the whole shoot, if judged by the movement of the extreme tip, is thus at times accelerated or retarded. One other point must be noticed. Authors have observed that the end of the shoot in many twining plants is completely ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... large- salaried football coaches, when individual play meant much; but he hammered team-work and the sacrifice of the individual into his team, so that on Thanksgiving Day, over a vastly more brilliant eleven, the Blue and Gold was able to serpentine its triumph down ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... above their heads, appearing to narrow towards the top, though this was an optical delusion. All was bright and glorious in the sunshine. The trees and shrubs were of a vivid green, the grass was brilliant with flowers; and running in serpentine waves through the middle of the lovely prairie that softly sloped down to it on either side, and whose sedges and clumps of trees dipped their tips in its sparkling waters, ran the river, dancing and foaming here over its rocky bed, there swirling ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... 2nd, and had begun to unwind their putties. But what a sight! Their putties were not soaked and not caked; say, rather, that there may have been a core of puttie inside, but that the men's legs were embedded in a serpentine cast of clay. As for their boots, you could only infer them from the huge balls of stratified mud men bore round their feet. Red mud, yellow mud, black mud, brown mud—they lifted their feet toilsomely; they were land plummets that had sucked up specimens of all the heavy, sticky soils ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... worth of a man such as Wilmot, while glowing I say and thrilling with these sensations, my breakfast was brought and with it a paper—! What shall I say?—It contained what follows! 'Yesterday a middle aged man, of a genteel and orderly appearance, was seen to walk despondingly beside the Serpentine river. A gentleman, who having met him remarked the agitation of his countenance, suspected his design; and, concealing himself behind some trees at a little distance, watched him, and at last saw him throw ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... identical in every respect with the granitic syenite of Schooley's mountain, distant at least forty miles. Others had no known type nearer than Connecticut, in the opposite direction, while the gneiss and mica slate of the island of New-York, with their various embedded minerals, the serpentine and many of the magnesian minerals of Hoboken, with sandstone and trap of the Pallisadoc range, were distinctly recognisable. In this great excavation, where a region of a mile square was wholly removed, to a depth, in many places, of thirty feet, no animal ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... a thought-form. The earlier stage, which is indicated by the upper form, is not uncommon, and indicates the determination to solve some problem—the intention to know and to understand. Sometimes a theosophical lecturer sees many of these yellow serpentine forms projecting towards him from his audience, and welcomes them as a token that his hearers are following his arguments intelligently, and have an earnest desire to understand and to know more. A form of this kind frequently ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... even at that distance, and in that still hour, you might almost catch the sound of the brawling waters, as they dashed down the weir in a foaming cascade; while, far away, in the spreading valley, the serpentine meanderings of the slender current might be traced, glittering like silvery threads in the moonshine. The mild beams of the queen of night, then in her meridian, trembled upon the topmost branches of the tall timber, quivering like diamond ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost—rising up in a living column ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Kendal smiled as he thought of the feminine variation the two girls illustrated. He had a distinct recollection of one crisp October afternoon before he went to Paris, as they walked home together under the brown curling leaves and passed the Serpentine, when he had found that the old charm of Janet's gray eyes was changing to a new one. He remembered the pleasure he had felt in dallying with the thought of making them lustrous, one day, with tenderness for himself. It had paled since then, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... mentioned commencing. The faithful declarations and testimonies given in favor of the covenanted reformation and uniformity, were all on a sudden given up with; the viper received into our bosom, and again advanced unto the regal dignity, who soon discovered himself to be of the serpentine seed, and by his wicked agency imped the dragon his master, by casting out of his mouth a flood of persecution after the church, that he might cause her to be destroyed therewith. To this effect the ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... teacher of the Daily News of London, tenders to his Most Glorious Excellent Majesty, Lord of the Ishaddan, King of Elephants, master of many white elephants, lord of the mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber, and the noble serpentine, Sovereign of the empires of Thunaparanta and Tampadipa, and other great empires and countries, and of all the umbrella-wearing chiefs, the supporter of religion, the Sun-descended Monarch, arbiter of life, and great, righteous ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Milky Way. In my map of 324,000 stars this stream can be quite clearly recognised; but, indeed, the brighter stars scattered along it form a stream recognisable with the naked eye, and have long since been regarded by astronomers as such, forming the stars of the Serpent and the Crown, or a serpentine streak followed by a loop of stars shaped like a coronet. Now the Milky Way, and the outlying streams of stars connected with it, seem to form a region of the stellar universe where fashioning processes ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... wait until the smokestack of the Confederate steamboat could be seen winding along as she tracked the serpentine course of the river. As she neared the wharf the band on board struck up that sweetest of tunes,—"Home, Sweet Home." Some of my companions laughed, some threw their caps into the air, others hurrahed, while my own emotions were expressed only by tears of joy that coursed down my cheeks. When, however, ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... no question about it. Astonishing as it appeared, the bluff, sunburned man in the motor boat which was winding its way toward the Curlew, in serpentine fashion, among the tortuous channels, was Captain Simms, the commander of the revenue cutter on which Jack Ready had served as "ice-patrol" operator. The greetings between his late commander and ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... four gates, each superb in style, you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale. Arcadia is in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and nowhere else. A river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park at its lower level with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness and tranquillity to the scene,—an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious financier ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac |
